


You can't sleep here.

by jumbi



Series: Filling the Void [4]
Category: Super Paper Mario (Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Illnesses, Starvation, Violence, i guess??, pregame, the count has a heckin bad time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27684704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumbi/pseuds/jumbi
Summary: the long, arduous, and fruitless search for timpani begins.
Series: Filling the Void [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1372000
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	You can't sleep here.

**Author's Note:**

> this short story takes place in my larger comic story "filling the void". it takes place in the long span of time between scenes 23 (in which the newly-minted "count bleck" tries and fails to process his grief in a wide and uncaring universe) and 24 (in which a badly-injured and thoroughly lost blue is rescued by a charitable human and learns about the "search function").

“You can’t sleep here.”

He groaned and cracked open his dry eyes. The world spun and boundaries blended into each other in a disorienting smear as the burning sun blasted any details out of view. His eyes squinted back shut. The oppressive heat shoved him back to the ground before he could sit up properly.

A swift kick to the ribs jabbed him awake. He rolled away from the impact, coughing and gasping, struggling upright. His cloak clung to his arms, dusty and chafing. But he didn’t bother brushing himself off. He swept the Prognosticus behind the fabric, out of the creature’s sight.

“You hear me? Get lost,” the voice cut in again. He struggled to keep his eyes open long enough to catch the creature’s hard-edged silhouette. He shielded his face against the sun with an exhausted, trembling hand. When the sun’s rays glanced off the creature’s flat back plates as it moved forward, he drifted back.

“I was just…” He didn’t bother with the rest of the sentence, instead mumbling an apology and staggering away down the dusty path. It wasn’t as if he could leave town. The glimmering bubble around the town kept the heat and walls of hot dust at bay. He rubbed his sore ribs; even the kicks and stones hurt less than that endless heat. He staggered into the shade of the next turn on the grimy side road and leaned against the rough clay wall of the train station. The Prognosticus sagged against his shoulder and his eyes began to flutter shut on their own. Even the train’s horn clanging across the alley couldn’t cut through his exhaustion.

With a pained grimace, he realized he hadn’t asked the stranger about Timpani. She could have landed in _any_ world, with _any_ person. If he didn’t manage to comb every inch of this town before he left, he could miss her and never realize. So he wobbled back around the corner. “Have you seen…”

He trailed off open-mouthed at the sight of not just the one creature marching down the road toward him, but five of them. Apparently, it wouldn’t do for him to stay in town at all, let alone rest by the road. His eyes struggled to focus as he glanced around the path. He hadn’t looked in every hiding place, he hadn’t asked everyone yet…

But he would never get to look anywhere at all if these creatures caught him, if they beat him or jailed him…

The train’s horn called again, snapping him to attention. He hopped back several paces and drew his wand. If he could land _in_ the train, he may yet find more of this world to search, at least. He cast the portal between himself and the creatures. Their feet stopped behind the shimmering air on the other side, so he barreled through the gap in space before they could realize what had happened.

He overshot his target and fell into the scorching sand far outside the bubble’s boundaries. He cried out at the burns and scratching, at the boiling sunbeams. The Prognosticus flew above his head, providing the barest hole in the sunlight to protect his eyes as he struggled to find the mental clarity to place another portal.

This world fell away and a splash of freezing water took its place, which set his skin burning anew with the shift in extremes. He fell to the ground, landing hard on his back among frosted rocks slicked with icy rain. He rolled over, under his cloak, and gasped for air.

And so his search for Timpani began again.

-

_What happens now?_ He cast out timidly, eyeing the Prognosticus.

“ _Count Bleck must eat,_ ” came the reply. He shuddered at the sharp prickle up the back of his neck at its response, as used to it as he had become. He pulled the book toward himself and carefully fitted his thumb claw between two of the densely-packed pages to crack it open.

Words cluttered the page, but he found his target after a quick scan. On its own line, squashed between clipped descriptions of the jungle he sat in, the answer jumped out at him: _Count Bleck must eat._

His ears twitched back. He glared at the dense foliage, as if judgment radiated from the very leaves around him. To shove away the feeling of eyes all around, he returned his attention to his experiment.

Had he seen this page before? Would the Prognosticus only give him words he had already seen? Or could it give him new information through this connection? Before his eyes could wander too far down the page, he closed the book and let it linger at his shoulder. He frowned, too on-edge to close his eyes and concentrate. Perhaps it could reach him even with his eyes open…

_Where will I find food?_

_“Count Bleck will ignore each opportunity presented to him and stop only when he is told.”_

_What does that mean?_

No response. He huffed and stood. Never reasons; only directions. Very well. He pressed forward through the enormous leaves, his ears twitching and turning at every rustle and chirp. Each breath came in a sharp hiss, despite his best efforts. The local birds had _mandibles_ , and he couldn’t afford another altercation on an empty stomach.

Oh, how he hoped Timpani hadn’t landed here. How he hoped he would never stumble across her body; he would never find her a moment too late. He had to find her soon. Soon. She could be _here_ , waiting, in danger.

His stomach gnawed at his insides as he peered around bushes and trees, keeping an ear tilted toward the tree cover. Sunlight filtered through in thin curtains, and a cluster of mushrooms glinted in the faint light. They looked plain enough, unassuming. He shifted his weight to move forward, but hesitated. _He will ignore each opportunity presented to him_.

The sickly purple vein of poison across the caps caught his eye upon closer inspection. The image of Timpani’s body corroded by the fungus cluster’s toxins assailed his mind, and he shrank back.

Perhaps he didn’t need to eat right now. He could just keep walking, and the Prognosticus would tell him when to stop, and he wouldn’t have to consider all the dangers Timpani could have succumbed to.

-

He ached. He sat at the side of the cold stone path, the way he had watched beggars and exhausted travelers sit. His ailing pride protested at the thought of becoming no more than a beggar himself, but he couldn’t find the energy to care anymore. With a long, rattled sigh, he leaned back and rested his head against the uneven cobblestone wall along the side of the road. The Prognosticus was wedged between his back and the wall, and its gem dug into his spine so that he couldn’t quite get comfortable no matter how he shifted his weight. His eyes slid over every passerby on their way into town. A sword at the belt; a heavy bag overflowing with linens; thin circular glasses, that must be a foreigner; and-

The barest flash of shimmering color caught his attention. Before he could register what he had seen, he found his hand reaching out. “Do I know you…?”

A rainbow ribbon tied in dark hair.

A flash of fear, disgust, in the woman’s eyes. She stumbled back, clutching the straps of her backpack. Then he realized the ribbon was all wrong. It sat around her head in a band, and her curly hair spilled out the back. He blinked, struggling to force the fog out of his mind.

“What do you want!?” She squared her shoulders and put her hand near her belt. Travelers farther down the path stopped and turned to stare.

He froze. His breath and his pulse pressed on his ears. His trembling hand closed into a fist as it pulled away from the girl. “I was, um…” Attempting to make himself smaller, he fell back against the pebbled wall. “I was only… You looked like someone I know. You looked like Timpani. Have you- have you seen her?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed; her stance shifted. “If you’re looking for an excuse to get into town, you won’t find it here.”

“N-no, I know, I was just…” His eyes flicked to the other groups of travelers standing in the road, watching. His claws gripped the wall as he ran his hands along the stone and inched away from the humans. He could feel his fangs drawing back in his fear, and he cursed himself with a hiss, and cursed himself again at the sinister tone of it.

Of course that startled the humans, of course that drove them to draw their weapons. He jetted away down the path and vaulted over the wall just in time to clear a lance of fire blazing past his shoulder. He darted along the wall off the path, ducked low, yanking his hood over his horns so they might not stand out so starkly against the golden fields.

The activity exhausted him. He stopped for his breath when the humans’ cries had faded, and the only sound left was the buzzing insects. He ached for Timpani- she had to be out searching for him as he searched for her. Surely he would come across someone who had heard of a girl looking for Blumiere. It could happen anywhere, at any time. He could not miss a single corner, he had to ask everyone, and he would find her eventually, and they would be reunited. This, he held with single-minded, unwavering certainty. They would meet again.

There would be no other human, no other being, that would ever look upon him so fondly.

-

At last, cool relief. He slumped against a short hill of concrete under a wide road. The Prognosticus perched on the incline by his shoulder. One of the locals, a furred creature with huge ears and prominent claws, shot a glare his way before shuffling off to the other side of the divot under the road, to join three of its fellows.

“Have you seen a girl named Timpani?” he tried, but his voice came out as a much weaker mutter than he expected. No one responded.

He glanced at the Prognosticus, but shook his head and turned away before he could give in to the urge to call to it. A scowl tugged at his brows, at his nose.

 _It’s hardly as if the book responds much, either,_ he snarled to himself. The book sat on the incline, as silent and unmoved as ever.

He shivered, despite the sunlight’s warmth outside of their shelter, and drew his cloak tighter around his shoulders. These cities, with their vast stretches of reflective rough stone, tended to stay warmer than the wilderness. And yet… he couldn’t seem to shake off this bitter chill.

The locals across the road’s underside chatted among themselves. He turned an ear toward them, but only dared glance out of the corner of a bleary eye.

They spoke of the weather, and some kind of game. They argued about the current hour. One of them called out words at random, until he realized the creature was naming vehicles as they passed across the bridge overhead. No word of a lost girl, or even any creature that might be mistaken for human. He turned back toward the incline, toward the book.

Despite the chill, he felt his face grow hot. They didn’t care what her name was. Even if they _had_ seen her, what reason had they to tell him anything? Perhaps he had already approached someone who knew of her, and they lied, and he passed through without ever knowing. He clenched his claws within the folds of his cloak, breathing growing ragged. Would that not make more sense than the idea that no one had ever heard of her at all? Would that not reflect the hostility that met him everywhere he went?

A growling complaint from his stomach cut through his festering. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. He could hardly remember when he’d landed in this world. The city, for all its shelter, provided little opportunity to forage. And he had lost the ability to hunt outside of its walls; he could rarely catch animals even in good health.

He recalled the containers of refuse and scraps, often dotted along the paths farther into the city. He narrowed his eyes at the Prognosticus. It hadn’t moved, but he felt the waves of its smug judgment all the same. Fur bristling, he batted the thing away, though on the rough stone surface it didn’t slide far.

He knew what it would recommend without even having to ask.

-

Nighttime tended to provide a cover of solitude and quiet. With every new village, town, city, he had to weigh his options: travel peacefully in the cover of darkness, or risk the locals’ fury for the chance of finding Timpani among them.

This night, under the punishment of a cold drizzle, he regretted his choice. He huddled under the shrubs outside a pleasant little cottage, its warm light pouring out into the backlot. If he sidled up against the fence marking its boundary, he could pretend for brief moments that the warmth could reach him.

A shadow passed across the cottage’s window. He shifted his weight and shrank away from the lot. Time to move on, then. But instead of coming out with a broom or weapon, the woman appeared in the light of the open door with a basket under her arm. She squinted in his direction, but he knew the most she could see was the dimmed, dull glow of his eyes reflected off the leaves around him. She set the basket down and hustled back into her cottage, closing the door behind her. The latching mechanism on the other side snapped shut with a dull click.

He hesitated. His breathing hissed shallow and ragged; his hunger gnawed through his abdomen up into his chest. He could smell the warm bread in the basket, even from across the lot. He crept forward and returned to the little wooden fence at its boundary, picking at the peeling cheerful paint as he considered making a dive for the basket.

The Prognosticus swung open next to his head and slapped its cover across his face. He violently flinched away and clung to the fence.

“What!?” he snapped, glaring at the open pages. He rubbed his palm against the bridge of his sore nose.

The words sat in front of him, indifferent to his grumbling. “ _Count Bleck would reject the humans’ traps, disguised as friendly offerings. There are no humans in existence whose goodwill he may rely on._ ”

He snarled and shoved the book aside, and stared at the basket. Maybe he could get away with one bite? A few bites? 

The book remained open at the edge of his vision. “ _Count Bleck will never find shelter with the humans. No matter how hungry, no matter how pathetic he becomes, they will never have mercy._ ”

The basket sat in the dark lot. His stomach cried out for the food inside, he could think of nothing but taking it before it grew cold and soggy in the nighttime chill. But he could go no farther than reaching out a tense claw. His fangs drew back and he felt his fur struggle to stand on end against the sodden shoulders and hood of his cloak.

A flicker of movement along the fence at the other side of the lot drew his attention. Some kind of large rodent crept out of the bushes and plodded toward the basket. A strained, undignified whine escaped him as the animal examined the cloth over the wicker and woven handle. It poked its nose under the cover to find the bread, stopped to glance around, and then dug greedily into the basket’s contents.

He sank to the wet grass and lay on the ground, watching the animal gorge itself on his meal through the even, trimmed planks of the fence. He couldn’t tell if the rain had soaked through his hood and ran down his face, or if his body had somehow scraped up the energy to cry.

The rodent stepped back from the basket after it had had its fill. It wiped its whiskers for a moment, as if considering its next move. Then a horrible shudder wracked its body.

He stared suspiciously at the animal. It remained standing in place for a few moments, its head hung low and its balance strange. His pulse struggled against his wrists. What was it doing?

The animal collapsed with a wet gurgle. Red foam poured out of its mouth and nose. Its thrashing slowed to twitching, and then to nothing.

Silently, his eyes flicked to the book’s open page.

“ _Count Bleck will find no aid in this world, or the next, or the next after that._ ”

-

Illness. The last thing he needed in a dark and strange world. Dark spires stabbed into the angry purple clouds overhead, crackling with intermittent lightning that covered the world in flashes of purple light and punched long shadows across his vision.

He staggered along, the book wobbling against his shoulder behind him. He caught his weight with trembling hands against a sharp pillar of stone sprouting from the earth and gasped for breath. The world reeled around him, and his body felt hollow and unstable. A dizzying fog rolled across his mind as he stared at the ground, wondering if perhaps the rocks here were edible. After that, he couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from the spot they had settled upon.

A scream rang out in the darkness, above the thunder. His attention locked onto the sound and he stumbled toward it before his mind could catch up. He saw figures in the distance, moving like quick still images as the world flickered between blinding light and blinding darkness. When the lightning ceased briefly, and his eyes re-adjusted to the darkness, he saw ahead a poor soul attempting to fend off three bandits.

Without thinking, he had already drawn his wand.

“Stop!” he called, but his voice had no volume or force, and so none of the humans paid him mind. He struggled to keep his eyes focused. Were they real? Was he simply watching a dream? The sky flickered again and thunder crashed over the group of them. He raised his wand in warning, letting a blaze of blue light pour over the group of humans. That got their attention.

Two of the bandits stopped in their tracks, varying degrees of shock flashing in their eyes and brows. Then they regained their courage and turned toward him. He faltered. With a last strike to keep the victim down, the third bandit joined and the three advanced on him instead. He drew the Prognosticus close, just behind his back, and did his best to look big and threatening. But in his weakness his eyes did not flare, and his fangs did not draw back fully, and the wand trembled in his claws, and he knew he looked more pathetic than impressive.

No matter. He had no time to retreat. The three bandits sprang upon him, and he beat them back with a shock wave. Black sparks spat from his wand, needling at anything they made contact with like burning embers. But he could not track three opponents at once, and one easily ducked out of the spray and came at him from the side.

The moment he turned his attention to the oncoming bandit, the other two jumped at him. One got their arm hooked around his neck, and he snarled and clawed at the human. That one cried out and pulled away, long streaks of red across their forearm. But another punched the side of his head. With a gasp he dropped his wand and crashed to the ground, landing hard on the Prognosticus.

The world wobbled and squirmed under his hands while he tried to support himself. The human’s fist pounded against his head again and he went down. He could hardly see, and he wasn’t sure if the flashing lights were from the sky or from the way his vision swam and spotted. As a bandit made for his wand, he snatched it away and pulled it toward himself.

One of the humans pinned him to the ground flat on his stomach, their knee dug into the back of his neck. “Let it go,” they threatened.

He choked, but refused to release his wand. As his vision began to fade, in his mind he reached desperately for the book.

_“Use your wand, you fool.”_

He gripped the wand as hard as he could in his weakening claws and cast a portal into the ground, and he and his assailant tumbled through together. They landed in the bloody dirt on the other side of the bandits’ previous victim.

Choking and wheezing, he staggered upright and pulled whatever magical energy he could muster into his hands. He barely recovered in time to launch the human back through the portal, directly into their companions. The three of them fell in a tangle of limbs and shouting.

He brought a barrier around the three of them in a thick bubble, and then fired the bubble away down the road. The three humans tumbled within it until the barrier broke, and he heard a single nasty _crack_. The three humans climbed shakily to their feet, and two of them supported the third as they fled into the night.

With that, he collapsed into the dark swirling dust, next to the injured human. The human blinked at him, then scrambled to their feet and stumbled back. He reached a trembling claw out toward the human, but didn’t have the energy for much more than resting his hand against the ground.

“Help,” he rasped. His bruised head throbbed at the effort. He cringed and curled in on himself, struggling to keep a wavering dim eye on the human.

The human stared at him, and then looked off into the distance. The light around them flickered and thunder rolled over the path. He waited. When he tried to close his mouth, his fangs didn’t fit together properly.

But instead of helping, the human shook their head, and they turned toward the path and limped off toward the road, the opposite way that the bandits had gone. The book laid nearby, half-buried in the dust. The air pressed in, thick and heavy, but refusing to rain. Heat and cold blew past in waves.

No help came.

_What should I do?_

“ _Get up._ ”

A broken sob escaped from between his fangs, and a miserable hiccup, and then he struggled to get his arms under himself. Time to move on.

-

_Where?_

“ _Here._ ”

He stopped and stared blankly at the ground.

_What is this place…?_

He frowned. Something was wrong with the sunlight overhead. He looked up.

A sheet of water hung in the air between the ground and sun. Huge fish swam around lazily, casting dappled shadows across the soft sand and gentle hills. Few plants grew here; the ones that did reached all the way up into the water. He blinked, slowly, his brows furrowing. Wasn’t that something.

Timpani would have found it fascinating.

 _Maybe someday you’ll get to see it_ , his muddled thoughts swirled.

The sun had moved incrementally in the time it had taken him to blink. It had done that a lot, the last few days. Skipped around while he wasn’t looking. He rubbed his tender, misaligned jaw with a dry, cracked knuckle, and returned his attention to the sand below.

He crouched and blew the sand aside with a quick spell, until the dull gleam of a handle caught his eye. A trapdoor. His ears perked. After tugging it open cautiously, he peered into the hole. No suspicious sounds or movement greeted him, so he glanced around before lowering himself into the chamber.

In the dark, cramped space, his dim eyes took a slow moment to adjust. Then, they widened. Cans, boxes, and bags lined the cluttered shelves, along with…

He could have cried from relief. The familiar red crisscross of a healing tonic greeted him.

Someone had stashed an entire shelter’s worth of supplies here. He had no energy to question what emergency they might have prepared for that he was confounding with his thievery. He raged at himself internally, he hated himself, even as he reached out with such greedy hands and tore the casings off the various jars of salve and tonic and set about patching himself up.

The pain faded, and the headache, and his jaw re-aligned with a vague little _pop_. Before he could stop himself, he had already turned to the stock of food and grabbed the first box in his reach. The cardboard ripped easily under his claws and he set about digging into the dry semi-sweet pastries. All that existed in the universe for a few moments was his hands, and the crackers, or granola, or whatever he had found, and his newly-repaired mouth.

The room warmed incrementally with the returning glow to his eyes. He closed them and took a deep breath. He had already stolen enough to last a lifetime, in his travels. This stranger had saved his life, even if against their will. He doubted that anything would ward off the endless chill, the soreness to his throat and nose and eyes, the way his stomach rebelled at the sudden meal even as it demanded more. But all the same, he stood straighter with the triumph of solving one problem for one minute.

With a weary hollowness he realized he had nothing with which to repay the stranger. He had a few coins, perhaps, hiding at the bottom of his bag. He made a clumsy attempt at digging for them, and then a more frustrated one.

Just as his fingers reached blindly around under his canteen, his ears twitched at the soft whisper of feet against sand above. He jolted out of his search and shrank back behind a shelf. With a twinge of annoyance, he realized his brightened eyes would foil any attempt at staying hidden while he snuck around the intruder.

A shiver ran up his spine at the metallic scrape of a drawn sword. He tugged the Prognosticus close, under his cloak. Though he reached out for its aid, the blasted book remained silent.

A long-legged, armored creature with a variety of spikes adorning its back and limbs dropped into the chamber, dragging a slender blade casually in one segment-fingered grip. His ears sank with dread. It took the creature only a second to notice his presence, and he had space neither to cast a portal nor to dart out through the hole in the ceiling.

His stomach churned at the prospect of moving, but he didn’t have much choice. He dove out from behind the shelf, his hands already ablaze with energy. The creature flinched back, but drew up its sword at his approach. He parried the sword with the blade of his elbow, but took a glancing blow across his shoulder that tore easily through his cloak. His eyes widened and his breath hitched as the creature unsheathed a second blade with an extra thin, chitinous arm on the same side and stabbed forward.

The Prognosticus swung around and the dagger bounced off its cover. He flinched back against the shelf with a horrible clatter, knocking the contents on the two of them in an avalanche of cans and cardboard.

Desperately, he thrust out a portal just below the hole in the ceiling and burst out of the pile. He flew through the portal and careened headfirst into a tangle of roots and brambles stuck out of the ground on the other side. He slammed his horns against something sharp and unyielding, and the impact rattled through his head and neck, and the world went dark and quiet.

A cold, sharp wind cut through his dazed stupor. He shivered. The trees around him creaked and groaned in the strengthening wind. The sound set him struggling against his thorny prison. He needed to hurry and find shelter.

He felt around his side. His bag was torn, but hung from his shoulder. The Prognosticus laid below him, suspended across a few sharp roots. He reached out a hand and in a flash of his aura the book jumped to him. His cold-numbed fingers worked to disentangle his cloak from the roots as the temperature dropped noticeably.

_Where…?_

“ _Count Bleck would find a suitable hole to crawl into a short way to his left._ ”

He found a comfortably-sized little hollow under the trunk of a nearby tree, just as the rain grew into sheets and waves tossed in the wind. He set his bag aside, and settled the Prognosticus against the wood, and bundled up his cloak around his shoulders, and curled up on the ground to wait. He tugged his canteen out from his bag.

Hot anger stabbed across his chest. He bit back a sob, but couldn’t stop the tears. _Idiot_. He should have moved faster. He should have had money ready- should have been more careful- should have-

He rolled over, to glare at the storm. So stupid. No wonder everyone turned him away. He was no better than some thieving wild animal. He wondered how wild he looked, if madness sat in his eyes the way he saw in other begging travelers outside of humans’ settlements. Perhaps they were right to hurt and chase him.

He ached for someone to fix everything, to take the Prognosticus away and let him rest, for Timpani to magically appear. If he… When he found Timpani, he wondered if things would really change. He had nothing to offer her, nowhere for them to go. No one who would take them in. Judging from his travels, he would put her in danger with his very presence no matter where they went.

The tears fell freely, now. He buried his face in his clenched fists and moaned, though the wind outside his little hollow buried the sound. He sat, alone and shivering, until sleep took him. 


End file.
